Forster v. . Scott’s Empirical Analysis
1893
Citation profile
2 district · 115 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 143 later decisions (11 by the Supreme Court) — most recently October 1976 · most notably Lindsley v. Natural Carbonic Gas Co. (1911), Northern Securities Company v. United States (1904)
2 district · 115 state decisions — followed in 13 states
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Relies on Munn v. Illinois · Wynehamer v. . the People · Bohan v. Port Jervis Gaslight Co. · Wetmore v. . Bruce · In re Opening Furman Street
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 143 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“•‘What the Legislature cannot do directly it cannot do indirectly, as the Constitution guards as effectually against insidious approaches as an open and direct attack. Whenever a law deprives the owner of the beneficial use and free enjoyment of his property, or imposes restraints upon such use and enjoyment that materially affect its value without legal process or compensation, it deprives him of his property within the meaning of the Constitution. All that is beneficial in property arises from its use and the fruits of that use, and whatever deprives a person of them deprives him of all that is desirable or valuable in the title and possession. It is not necessary, in order to render a statute obnoxious to the restraints of the Constitution, that it must in terms or in effect authorize an actual phs’sical taking of the property or the thing itself, so long as it affects its free use and enjoyment or the power of dis-j)osition at the will of the owner.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.